R3 Lost 0-2 to Eldrazi Tron.
G1 i mulliganed to six, then he went something like this: T2 Thought Not Seer (as known as TNS), T3 TNS, T4 Conduit to Ruin searching for his pal Ulamog, T5 TNS, T6 Ulamog. Whenever i drew the combo, Scapeahift or Titan), wasnt able to cast it on my turn and during his, it was removed fron the game. Also, i was on the draw and the first TNS remove 1 of my Sakura. When i played the 2nd, he plays Pithing needle...omfg.
G2 i mulliganed again, then he went like this: T3 TNS, T4 Conduito to Ruib, T5 TNS and that was gg.

R4: won 2-1 against abzan company (i think). Not much to say here, lost G1 due to mana screw the won easily G2 and 3.

Maybe next time will change some sideboard cards, really like the main as it is right now, but i can hear some opinions:)

Did he name Sakura for the pithing needle? If he name sakura and you already had STE in play, you could actually sacifice sakura-tribe elder first and grab a land before the pithing needle resolved.

I just play back magic fairly recently after 1 year or so not playing magic and I did up the R/G titanshift deck namely because I have the RUG scapeshift shell and with current heavy aggro meta in my LGS, it seems like a control version of RUG shift is not very good and hence I did up titanshift instead and found it to be relatively nice. Some questions and I hope you guys can help me answer abit on the deck. Appreciate any answers.

1) Is 4 Valakut, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle too many? Are there any situations whereby 2 or 3 valakuts is not enough? From what I remember, most RUG version play 2 valakut previously so im wondering if there are special rationale to use 4.

2) What matchups do you guys think is the worst for Titanshift? Aggro like affinity, infect? Control like Jeskai Nahiri or RUG scapeshift? midrange like jund/abzan? or Combo like Ad nauseam, storm?

3) Are there any Sideboard cards that will shutdown this deck? Like how 1 stony silence can affect affinty and etc?

If you want to prevent people from being able to block your creature then cards like apostle's blessing are the one that will prevent that although you have to take note that you have to use it before the declaring blockers step and also take note of the color of the pump spells that you have in your hands before choosing the color because you wouldn't want to end up not being able to pump your creature due to the protection though you can still in response to blessings and pump your creature first.

Whenever a player plays a spell, that player keeps priority.
Whenever a spell resolves, the active player gets priority.

You as the active player have the priority.

You casted Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and have nothing to do after casting Ugin and so you passed the priority to your opponent who cast dig through time and since he have nothing else to do after casting DTT, he passes the priority back to you and since you have nothing to do as well, spells start to resolve.

Stack will be like this:

Top of the stack
Dig through time
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Bottom of the stack.

Spells on top of the stack will resolve first and hence Dig through time will resolve and he get to look at the top 7 cards and choose 2.

After DTT resolves, the active player which is you get the priority back and you have nothing to do and thus you passed the priority back to your opponent and the opponent now have the chance to response again which he in turn cast Disdainful Stroke and pass back the priority to you and since you have nothing to do, spells will start to resolve and hence your Ugin is countered upon the resolution of dislainful stroke.

I don't want to discuss new cards in this post, but it would be very very easy to create powerful instants 4 CMC for grixis or esper pure control decks.

Of course it would. But the key point here is that Twin/Scapeshift/etc. would be able to use those too. The end result is that existing decks get pushed up as much as this elusive, hypothetical "pure control deck" would, and so the "pure control deck" would still be worse than Twin. Twin and Scapeshift already often run some number of Cryptic Command, so no amount of blue mana symbols will keep Twin and Scapeshift from playing your control dream 4 CMC draw spell. I guess if you made it Grixis or Esper colors, you might (might!) have a case, but if it was good enough, they'd just play those colors. Heck, there was already a Grixis Twin deck at the Pro Tour, even with out some hypothetical awesome grixis draw spell.

I'm sick of this "pure control" discussion. We've said all there is say. I'll summarize: Some people wish really hard that there was a "pure control deck" (even though no one really knows what that means, or will admit that they just want to play draw-go from a decade ago). Most people, though. either dislike such control decks, or more likely just don't care enough to want Wizards to push hypothetical "only good for pure control" cards.

[/rant]

lol.. that is very true.. a good example is a very good card that control used previously and was used even to greater effect by the combo decks of scapeshift and twin is dig through time which was recently banned.. lol.. As in control need that instant speed, card quality and the raw power of dtt often allow it to find that stabilizing factor that they need or the specific card that they need to get out of a fix such a removal for a creature, a helix to prevent lethal or a threat to present for next threat.

I used DTT very well in a uwr shell and it often help me closed the games but when I added it to my twin or scapeshift deck, it is very obvious that no doubt the card is very good in control but it also at the same time pushes combo up very well.. so in reality, most control usable cards would somehow find a way into the combo decks that can make uses of them as well and this will never help a combo vs control matchup.

There isn't a need to get defensive. I was also only highlighting the fact that generally that doesn't happen that often but is good to know that but tect edge doesn't counter scapeshift that much. It buys us turns which is good of course. My point is not disagreeing with the choice of tect edge anyway. It is a good card to have at times and sure it delays abit which is good.

I play both twin and scapeshift and occasionally make my playgroup and friends play scapeshift for me to try out twin.. It isn't that bad but can hard to combo off at times..

Edit: scapeshift does run izzet charms and most recent version always have bolts as well plus electrolyze for removal. different verison have sweepers though I think with recent list, they might have taken out since cruise was banned so that does make the tempo plan so much better at the moment.

A good scapeshift player won't cast scapeshift if he see a tectonic edge in play and he have only 7 lands unless he have no choice but to try for it this turn or lose the game which generally wouldn't happen cos they play more counterspells than twin and can afford to fight over twin combo since they have more mana..

Yup. I get what you mean. No matter how people want to split up the thread, there bound to have some issues. I doubt we can achieve a foolproof perfect solution though.

I mean the main point is what is the thread aiming to accomplish at the end? If it is to have high quality discussion for competitive play, I guess some organization will be necessary at the end to prevent the diluting of quality discussion and have lesser players asking the basic questions that are not relevant to the style of play all the time.

I think consensus is general is that discard is not that good although you can still delve it away but i think 3 or 4 is still fine.. And I think it is also rather dependent if your plan A is combo or plan A is beatdown as well. If you want to have more beatdown, probably might want to lower the combo pieces to 5 creatures and 3 twin? but if you are going for the more combo base, i guess that is still good.. Will probably need to test it to see how it goes though.

An sub archtype split of the tempo (UR) , midrange ( RUG/URB) and control (UWR) will probably be nice since in general their main deck choices and sideboarding are different and they have different advantages vs different decks.

Will be good if in the beginning of the primer, there can be links to the different threads if split.. I guess quality discussion should be prioritized over the convenience purposes of being able to find all the information in 1 thread. In fact, the only convenience you get is just that you only have to stick to one thread to look but if you really think carefully, sometimes the hassle of having to look through so many different pages just to get some information regarding the variations that you want is actually more time consuming than the fact of having to just go another thread that is more specialized in that sub archtype.

The only cons I do see with the spliting of the sub archtypes is that generally getting good discussion in other threads will be an issue.. Even in the UwR thread which was set up more than 1/2 yr ago, it took only 4 days for this newly posted twin thread to have more posts than it. Which means people are still going to flock back over to UR twin thread to find suggestions and ideas if other twin thread is inactive or does not have very active discussion..

Most FNMs that I have been to do not require deck registration. If you plan on playing I would show up 15 minutes early if the deck is finished and tournament legal. If you need to purchase cards to complete the deck show up earlier. Spider spawning is not standard (being from innistrad) so be aware. I would actually play in a tournament rather then suggesting watching because that way you jump in, and get a feel for how it plays. If you need to purchase cards to complete the deck show up earlier.

I'm guessing I can check the LGS website to see when tournaments and FNMs occur correct? I really would like to start attending and making friends, just worried about walking into the shop with the middle of a tournament on and making it awkward lol

Welcome to Magic and there is alot to learn and take your time to slowly learn and have fun. Just some tips for you.

1) FNM stands for Friday Night Magic so it is usually on Friday's night.. lol.. Do make sure that you check out if the FNM format is standard or modern or other format though. Most is standard although some stores run modern FNM as well.

2) And if you have a smart phone, you can go and download apps like mtg familiar and it have usually all the information of the cards. Useful tool for browsing and looking at cards like when you are bored or travelling and stuff.

3) Try to decide on format that you wanna play first before you spend money on buying packs, singles and etc. In general, it is harder to form a decent deck just by purchasing boosters or packs. Singles are more expensive but can save you some $ in the long run but make sure you check the prices of the singles on mtg websites first before you buy in case traders over quote you.

4) Be sure to understand that standard format do rotates though. lol. this means if you play standard, after rotation, cards from the rotated block will no longer be legal to be used in standard format and hence playing standard format means your deck constantly have to change cards here and there.

4) Yes. You should try to make more friends. Having friends to play together will make your game alot more enjoyable.

I disagree, I only ran 3 TCs in my build and switched them out with telling times and I am beating Junk, Infect, Burn, Affinity, Amulet all day long. The deck has not lost that much power, people are just not trying hard enough.

But I am not here to change your mind. You continue doing what you do, and I will do the same. As I have been told, local metas dont matter in this game.

You have to be joking. I've seen a ton of people say that UR Delver needed to be hit, but someone pretending that it isn't a big deal that the deck lost (for the way the deck played out) a 1 mana +2 card advantage spell is a new one. Comparing it to a one mana LOOK at three cards? Really? Cheap, raw advantage spells are unprecedented for tempo decks. The "4 cards tops" is particularly hilarious, as any individual ban (excluding a hypothetical Relentless Rats variety) is "4 cards tops." Tons of decks would fall apart with the loss of "just" 4 cards.

I would love to know what decks fall apart if they just lose 4 cards.. This isn't sarcasm by the way.

I know some decks will fall apart if they lose their key cards like twin losing twin, scapeshift losing scapeshift, bloom titan losing amulet.. Mostly are combo decks who will fall apart if 4 of their key cards are taken away. But most decks doesn't I believe. Of course it make them alot weaker like taking away eidolon from burn, karn from tron, lotv from jund/junk and etc but they wun necessary fall apart.

Edit: for delver and cruise, I do think the ban of cruise weaken the deck alot but it is still playable just that there are better choices to play over delver in general..

It's playable in the sense that yes it is a deck you can play, but it is NOT tournament viable any longer. That's the point people are making. It drops back to tier 2.5. And zoo if it lost any of its efficient creatures would become unplayable I bet. ESPECIALLY goyf.

Hmm. I won't disagree with that though. It is probably still playable in local small stores and lgs but probably not really that good a choice to play in bigger tournaments especially with the current meta.

How do I get this rename credit? That is because I realize someone have previously used my email to register here and given me a username that I do not wish to use even though I wish to use this email. Thank you.